“Don’t you?”
“No. I’ve had enough of all that.”
“Yes, I can understand. But you’re doing yourself an injustice.”
“Oh, I’m not good, Daniel. I’m not a good woman. Not at all.”
Daniel hesitated. “It—your standard of goodness, Anna—I think it would defeat most of us.”
“Oh, my standard, yes. But what I live up to, that’s another question.”
Daniel became brisk. “Have you eaten? No, of course not. The house seems very cold. I think I ought to try to track down Ralph. The hospital’s number, do you have it? They could find him and bring him to a phone. You don’t have to speak to him. I’ll do it. Just to see what the situation is, what his immediate intentions are.”
“Don’t bother.” She turned away. “As for the child—I’ve told you, I don’t want to know. Year after year he’s inflicted these dreadful children upon me, awful, hopeless children—” She stopped. “He will come home. Eventually.” She leaned against Daniel. He put an arm around her. She began to cry. “I can’t face him. I feel ashamed. It’s as if it’s me who’s done something wrong. I won’t be able to look him in the eye.”
“Then you don’t need to stay here. Let me drive you over to Blakeney.”
“To Ginny’s? Oh no, it’s late … and besides …”
“She wouldn’t ask you questions, you know.”
“Daniel, how can you believe that?”
“I’m an optimist,” he said. His face looked grim, as if he were aging in a night. “Come back to my flat, then. Just bring what you need for now. I’ve got a spare bed. I’ll make you comfortable.”
“Yes, take me to your flat. I want to be gone before Ralph gets here. I must be.” She moved slowly back down the hall. “I’ll be five minutes.”
As she packed her toothbrush, nightdress, a change of clothes, she remembered the policewoman, standing over her in Elim: telling her what she would need. She should have a policewoman now; directionless, enfeebled, her hands moved among her possessions. She heard Daniel downstairs, talking on the telephone. “No, Kit, I don’t think she should come there to you, she’d have to think of something to say to Becky, she can’t face it … Just you and Emma hang on for now, can you? … Its very late, we’re all tired, tomorrow things will be … Yes, to Blakeney, why not? If she still feels she must keep away from Ralph.”
They are making arrangements for me behind my back, she thought. As if I were a sick or injured person. Which I am, of course. She had an image of herself and Ralph, two sick or injured animals yoked together: dragging their burden, sometimes in circles.
In the car she began to cry. The lanes were dark, the trees dripping, puddles shining in their headlights; the half-hour journey seemed a lifetime. Holt was deserted: a few shopfronts dimly lit, the pub doors bolted. Daniel parked his car, walked around it to help her out. She needed the help; slumped against him, leaned on his arm. “It’s clearing,” he said, looking up at the sky.
“Yes.” She scrubbed at her face. Tried to smile.
Daniel unlocked his door and flooded the night world with a vast, white, hard light. She climbed a steep staircase, seeing the phantom outlines of drawing boards through a glass door. “Up to the top,” Daniel said.
“You are being very kind to me.”
“It’s nothing, Anna.”
The staircase opened into a large and lofty room, sparely furnished: the walls of exposed flint, the timbers exposed, the floor bare and waxed: its expanse broken only by two dark fringed rugs, their design geometric, their colors somber. Flying carpets, she thought. No clutter anywhere, just those matte black machines that young men have: no windows, but skylights enclosing the weather and the night. Anna stood considering it. “Kit never told me about this.”
“A way of being outside when you’re inside. Kit hardly comes here.”
“True. I know.”
“Do you like it?”
“Very much.” A life free of complexity, she thought. “Can you keep it warm?”
“Not easily. Can’t have everything. Would you like to bathe your face?” She nodded. She sat on the sofa, and he brought her a bowl of water, some cotton balls, and a small cream towel. He sat down next to her, as if she must be supervised. “Lukewarm water is best,” he advised. “If you have ice, it makes your eyes swell even more.”
“I’m sorry, Daniel,” she said.
“Nothing to be sorry for. Better to cry among friends. Look, Anna—all this, with Ralph, it’s ridiculous. An aberration.”
“You think so?”
“I know it is. Just one of those things that happen in marriages.”
“The marriages of middle-aged people, you mean.”
“Look, everything is easier to face in daylight.” He ventured a smile; took from her fingertips one of the sodden balls of cotton. “In the morning you can have your choice. The greengrocer will be open, so you can have cucumber slices for your eyes. Or tea bags, if you like. I have Earl Grey, Assam, or Darjeeling.”
“Goodness. What a lot you know about female grief.”
“My mother, you see.”
“Since your father died?”
